


Rent

by delusion_al



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 1990s, Alternate Universe - RENT Fusion, Angst, Character Death, Drug Use, Guitarist Keith (Voltron), HIV/AIDS Crisis, Illnesses, Multi, New York City, Past James Griffin/Keith (Voltron), Stripper Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:15:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23668999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delusion_al/pseuds/delusion_al
Summary: A year in the life of some starving artists struggling to survive and pay their rent in New York's gritty East Village; featuring Lance, clad only in bubble wrap performing his famous lawn chair-handcuff dance to the sounds of iced tea being stirred, and Keith attempting to write a bittersweet, evocative song that doesn't remind us of Musetta's Waltz.
Relationships: Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Allura/Romelle (Voltron), Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	1. Rent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to another v. self-indulgent au whilst we're all in quarantine 
> 
> not sure what's happening with my hp fic as it's been a while since i updated but since i no longer have uni, there's plenty of time for me to finish it haha
> 
> thank you henri murger for romanticising 19th century bohemian life, and puccini for adapting his book into a fantastic opera, and jonathan larson for applying said opera to his life in 1980s new york city. funny how some themes transcend centuries.

_How do you document real life when real life’s getting more like fiction each day?_

“December twenty-fourth, nine p.m., 1989, Eastern Standard Time. From here on in I shoot without a script.”

Christmas Eve in New York, the centre of the known universe. Through the scope of a Bolex H-8 16mm, the earth tilted on its axis, orbiting around a spacious East Side apartment decorated with exposed concrete, a bathtub in the centre of the room, and a man playing guitar. Half-moon windows showed the darkness outside and tumbled towers, rising suddenly into the clouds like dream girdled by water.

Babylon and Nineveh were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople, the minarets flamed like great candles around the Golden Horn. And Manhattan – crammed on the narrow island the million-windowed buildings just glittered, pyramid on pyramid.

“See if anything comes of it instead of my old shit.”

Pan to the man on guitar and his AKG C451E mic.

“First shot: Keith tuning the Fender guitar. He hasn’t played in a year.”

“This won’t tune,” Keith said, and the dissonance sounded like an illness. Each pluck and twist was jarring, frets trembling, gnawed fingers seizing.

A chuckle. “So we hear. He’s just coming back from half a year of withdrawal.”

Keith shuddered at that and he reared up from where he was curled over his Fender. “Are you talking to me?”

“Not at all. Are you ready? Tell the folks at home what you’re doing, Keith.”

He gulped. Scratched his cheek. “I’m writing one great song –”

Interrupted by the shrill tremolo of a push-button telephone which rapidly zoomed into the picture.

“The phone rings!”

“Saved,” Keith said breathlessly from the periphery.

“We screen. Zoom in on the answering machine.”

It never rang more than three times. The homemade dial tone composed of two voices commanding their gate crasher to “speak!” corresponded with the click of the answering machine.

“That was a very loud beep,” Colleen Holt said. “I don’t even know if this is working, Matt. Matt, are you there? We wanted to call and say we love you and we’ll miss you tomorrow. Katie is here – she sends her love. Oh, I hope you like the hot plate. Just don’t leave it on, dear, when you leave the house. Remember to take your AZT. Love, Mom!”

_Headlines, breadlines_

_Blow my mind_

_And now this deadline_

_"Eviction or pay"_

Film was the first art form capable of demonstrating how matter could play tricks on people and, boy, did it play tricks on Katie. The sound of her brother’s voice was a fallacy of his permanence in a world where everything ends and yet desires that kind of permanence all the same. The tape she’d unearthed from the boxes in his bedroom presented that same kind of dilemma. He was both present and absent at the same time – omni-permanence vs. omni-transience.

It was the only tape she’d found with sound, a stark contrast to the quiet of the apartment now. Keith was still playing the same song from a year ago, a waltz in E major, but that was it.

Rewind.

The spools rotated and the film fluttered over the phone in his lounge, the couch, the old rock ‘n’ roll posters, the illegal wood burning stove and its exhaust pipe, the extension cord all the electrical appliances were plugged into, the fire escape. Then it flared to white.

Replay.

The motors whirred and, “December twenty-fourth, nine p.m., 1989, Eastern Standard Time.”

Pause. There, in the black window, the faint reflection of Matt behind the camera like a ghost. Katie pressed her lips together and took a deep, shaky breath through her nose – fully rewound the tape, flipped it out of the projector, and added the spool to a pile of those like it she’d been collecting.

All the footage of Matt.

He’d never filmed himself, focusing instead on the city’s alphabetic streets and the flaming trashcans that housed their residents. An old man who scraped the gunk off car windows in exchange for insults. A young woman with a leopard-print jacket. Sometimes, concerts at CBGB and the Pyramid Club, before Keith stopped playing.

Always the tent city that sprung up in the lot next door each winter.

The few tapes he was in showed no decline, no illness, though she knew it festered beneath his skin. In the Life Support meetings, sometimes he’d sat and clapped and smiled and his skin only sometimes showed the pallor of his low T cells.

He hadn’t faded into nothing like he’d hoped. He’d left scars alongside his pills. It didn’t matter that he’d walked so lightly when his film remained. _Unfinished film_ – he’d never finished his documentary.

The last thing he’d filmed was an eviction notice on the front door. She sighed.

Pressed play.

“From here on in I shoot without a script.”

Fast-forward to, “Keith tuning the Fender guitar,” the notes from the track echoing whatever he was strumming next door. And again because, “he’s just coming back from half a year of withdrawal.” A year and a half now. Double time, past him scratching his cheek to the phone ringing.

Pause.

The phone was still ringing.

“Shit.”

Katie wrenched herself away from the projector and out of Matt’s makeshift home studio to the loft. There was one other bedroom and a sofa-bed, on which Keith basically lived. He was there now, in the same position and same clothes as he had been in the film from approximately one year ago. Strumming the same song on the same guitar.

She tried not to judge him too harshly.

It had already gone to voicemail and she had to interrupt a rendition of _Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire_ to answer.

“Hello?”

“I’m downstairs.”

“…Shiro?”

Keith jumped up from where he was lounging and it was so uncharacteristic that she flinched, watching as he opened the window onto the fire escape and called a greeting down onto 11th Street far below. He pulled a pair of keys from the pocket of his jeans and threw them over the railing before coming back inside and rubbing his hands together for warmth. People had to call to be let in because the buzzer was broken.

A dead tone entered Katie’s ear and she realised Shiro had hung up.

He’d lived with Matt before – well…he still lived here. When he wasn’t teaching at MIT. Keith had stayed intermittently between bouts of rehab until eventually he’d gotten clean and become a permanent feature. Katie was just visiting. Picking out things to send to mom and dad in Atlanta before she had to get back to college.

She wiped her nose, surprised at how much time had passed since she’d started sorting through Matt’s tapes. It was already dark.

“Was that Shiro?” she asked as Keith sat back down and pulled his duvet, a makeshift quilt, over his legs.

He nodded. “He’s back home for Christmas. How’s the film?”

“It’s good.” She gulped. “I don’t know what to do with it. There’s not enough to publish.”

“Make it into a memorial.”

“A memorial to what?”

He snorted, like it was supposed to be obvious. “To Matt.”

“He wouldn’t like that,” she half-snapped, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Doesn’t matter,” Keith responded coolly. “He should be remembered in some way or another.”

Katie rubbed her arms, feeling now more than ever the chill. “Who wants to be remembered?” she muttered.

“I do. It’s what bothers me most – being another unremembered casualty in this inglorious war against disease.”

He tugged a chord – a D-flat major – a little too violently and Katie was struck by the maudlin poeticism of his speech. It was the most she’d spoken to him since she’d arrived yesterday, though not from her own lack of trying. It would seem he wasn’t a conversationalist.

“Where’s Shiro?” she asked in a last-ditch bid to change the subject. It didn’t take that long to get to the top of the stairwell.

The phone rang again. “Maybe that’s him,” Keith said.

Katie was already on it, clicking it onto speaker. “Hello? Shiro?”

“Ho ho ho!”

“Shit!” Keith yelped, scrambling to his feet and over to the receiver faster than Katie could respond. He snatched it from her grasp, his fingerless gloves doing little to warm his frigid fingers as they touched hers. “What do you want?”

“Ah, Keith,” his landlord murmured, his voice softly crackling through the line. “So nice to hear from you – and who was that just now?”

“Matt’s sister,” he grunted. “What do you want, Lotor?”

“I need the rent.”

“What rent?”

“This past year’s rent which I let slide.”

“Unbelievable,” Katie whispered, scarcely believing her ears.

“‘Let slide?’” Keith repeated, incredulous. “You said we were ‘golden’ when you bought the building and when we were neighbours. Remember? You lived here!”

“How could I forget?” Lotor drawled. “Allura and I – how is she? Heard she’s dating some twink.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes hard and grimaced. “Yeah, her girlfriend, Romelle. Emphasis on the ‘girl.’”

A smattering of laughter. “What a joke. Rent is due or I will have to evict you. It’s a dual-tenancy – I’m sure you and Shiro can work something out, even though Matt’s – well – you know. Be there in a few.”

_How do you write a song when the chords sound wrong though they once sounded right and rare?_

_When the notes are sour where is the power you once had to ignite the air?_

A semi-quaver arpeggio in E major, played _con ondulazione_ , transitioning to a G-sharp minor chord held for one beat. Then, to A major, trying to balance a series of quavers precariously over an F-sharp minor base, and it all fell apart at B seven.

Keith’s patience exploded in tandem with the fuse.

“The power blows!”

_And we're hungry and frozen_

_Some life that we've chosen_

“Hey, Hunk, it’s me, Allura, your assistant production manager.”

“Hey hey hey!”

“Where are you?”

“A little busy.”

“The digital delay didn’t blow up exactly. There may have been one teeny tiny spark.”

“Hang on – I know a guy.”

_How do you start a fire when there’s nothing to burn and it feels like something’s stuck in your flue?_

Before he could explain who or what or where or why, the phone heaved its very last high-strung breath and died.

“Hello? Allura? Hello?”

Hunk’s studio apartment was plunged into blackness, all 400 square feet providing an apt space for accidents. He doubted he’d land on the floor if he tripped though – there wasn’t enough space for that. He’d land belly-first on one of the stylish rattan chairs that sat in his front room and break it, along with his skin.

This inevitability led to him walking slowly, very slowly, past the bathroom and its separate sink and back into the bedroom. Out the floor-length window, beyond the fire escape, the rest of the street was similarly, abnormally black.

“Dude,” the young man outside said through a puff of his cigarette. “It’s a power-out.”

“Lance!” Hunk cried, pushing the glass out enough that he could poke his head outside. A gust of semi-frozen city air scurried through his arm hair, prompting each stand upright. “What are you doing? It’s freezing and you’re sick! Get back inside!”

He was only wearing a pair of bellbottoms, no socks or shoes, and a thin nylon V-neck, but Hunk could still see the sheen of sweat on his forehead reflected in the moonlight, the smirk around the fag in his mouth. He’d appeared only that afternoon, armed with a duffle bag and the news that he’d been thrown out after defaulting on rent again.

He had nowhere else to go – what was he supposed to do?

“Relax,” Lance replied, squeezing back inside after he’d chucked the rest of his fag. “I’m fine. Can hardly feel the cold.”

Thinner than he’d been when Hunk had last seen him, a little less tanned and a little more flushed. “What did you eat today? There’s a can of beans in the cupboard.”

A shrug. “I’m not hungry. Who called?”

“Allura, about the tech.”

“Shit. It’s not broken, is it?”

“I hope not.”

On loan from the club where they worked together, he sorely hoped she hadn’t gotten it wet or something. He couldn’t afford to lose his job, much less replace any equipment.

“The protest can still go on, right?” his friend spluttered between coughs and Hunk clenched his jaw, wiping the damp from Lance’s forehead with a cloth.

“Not with the fever you’re running. You should lie down.”

He knew the answer to Lance’s sickness was located in the back pocket of his jeans and the bruises on his forearms, hidden cleverly beneath the long sleeves of his sweater. The gear in his bag, the teaspoon he’d marked with a thin piece of tape, his constricted pinpoint pupils unveiling blue, blue eyes and pulsing veins.

But Lance was too jittery to lie down and when Hunk groped for him in the darkness, he was shivering.

“Got a light?” Lance asked.

“You just smoked.”

“I know, but it’s hard to see in here and my lighter’s broken.”

“Oh, right.”

He dropped to his hands and knees, crawling over to his bedside table where he kept the matches. The box felt too light and when he shook it, the contents rattled around disappointingly. Not enough.

Hunk struck one and the immediate vicinity burst into a heady orange glow, the brown flesh of his hand cupping the flame, the luminescence of Lance’s skin from where he sat on the bed, coughing wetly. Its heat contrasted sharply with the night air – damn, he really wished Lance hadn’t opened the window.

There were some candles somewhere and a kinara, a seven-branched holder, which he’d been saving for Kwanza. But fuck it, he needed the light and it was only two days early. The black candle in the centre he lit first, for the people, then the three red on the left, for their struggle, and then the three greens to the right, for their glory.

“Lance, buddy,” Hunk murmured, grabbing his clammy fingers. His eyes looked waxy in the firelight. “I have to go upstairs for a bit. There’s someone who might be able to help Allura. Will you be okay?”

“The hot guitar guy?” he replied with a smile. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Why don’t you go and help her?”

“Because you’re here.”

It wasn’t meant to sound like an accusation. More of a promise that he’d make sure he didn’t do anything stupid, like shoot up.

Lance licked his lips and smiled weakly. “How long will you be?”

“Not long.”

Hunk tossed him the unfinished kente he’d been trying to make, a patchwork of interwoven cloth strips coloured in yellows and blues. Its weft-based patterns had been inexpertly knitted into blocks of plain weave, embedded with pride in lieu of skill.

“You can work on this for me,” he explained. “My sewing kit’s in the drawer. You’re a much better tailor than I am.”

Lance chuckled, sounding defeated, but fingered the soft fabric anyway. “I can try.”

“If I’m not back in ten minutes, come and get me.”

_How do you generate heat when you can’t feel your feet and they’re turning blue?_

The cold arrived immediately, all at once, leaving the loft desolate. The multitude of candles burning created a false, comforting atmosphere that Keith couldn’t really feel in the wake of the crisp night air. All his senses had been wiped away – all smells sucked clean from the air, colours stripped away, feeling giving way to numbness.

New York was nothing like Santa Fe.

In Santa Fe, his whole yard had been crowded with different-sized terracotta pots, out of which his mom had grown everything from rosemary and lavender to ornamental pear and plum trees and even peppers, although they weren’t particularly popular with the bees.

In New York, he and Matt had created a fertile oasis on the roof out of old gas can and cut-off oil drums. His neighbours had been sceptical to begin with but once the creepers grew up and their flowers draped down and their shrubs fluffed out, the junkyard ugly duckling was transformed into the proverbial backyard swan.

The creepers and flowers and shrubs had died with Matt at the end of October.

“Where’s Shiro?” Katie asked through chattering teeth. She’d pulled on one of her brother’s old jumpers and, though she was shorter and had longer hair, the resemblance between them was uncanny.

“Hell if I know,” Keith muttered, breathing life into his deadened fingers. He couldn’t play guitar like this.

“Didn’t you throw the keys down to him?”

“You saw me do it. He must’ve gotten held up.”

Everyone got held up in Manhattan. It was like a giant suction cup, sucking bystanders into its folds. This city bred no wimps and made no apologies. He used to love it but, even though he thought it would never happen, New York had lost its charm for Keith. He remembered arriving for the first time, getting into a massive cab that didn’t have a moment to waste and falling in love as soon as he shot onto the bridge.

He’d lost his virginity to New York twice, had his mind blown open by the combination of heavy metal’s nuclear assault and a pill-popping international crowd. He’d become tough. He’d had fun. He’d learned so much.

But it was starting to feel empty, a great party that had gone on too long and was showing no signs of ending soon. He had a headache and he was tired. He’d danced enough. He wanted a quiet conversation with someone who knew what load-shedding was.

There was a knock at the door.

“That might be him,” Katie said.

Keith knew it wasn’t. Shiro wouldn’t have knocked – he would’ve just let himself in. So, he put his guitar to the side and braced himself for Lotor to demand payment in money he didn’t have.

“Hey, Keith,” greeted someone who wasn’t Shiro or Lotor. It was the guy who lived downstairs – he’d been helping Matt with his documentary.

“Hunk? Is your power out too?”

“The whole block’s down. I need a favour. You know the protest my friend is hosting on Boxing Day?”

“Sure.” He knew about the protest, but he didn’t know Hunk’s friend.

“Allura’s having an issue with the equipment and, well, you can do stagecraft, right? Since you were in a band?”

Yeah, he’d been in a band of which all that remained was slow diminution and loss. A waning of the full and effulgent candle of his youth. Not that the bright light of his youth was anything to be proud of. He did unkind and sometimes illegal things and the raucous music of that time was gone.

“I don’t know anything about stagecraft,” Keith said. “Matt did. Why can’t you help her? You’re a DJ.”

Hunk smiled, abashed. “I’m a little held up.”

See? Everyone got held up in Manhattan.

_How do you stay on your feet when on every street it’s trick or treat and tonight it’s trick?_

Shiro hadn’t been held up. He’d been mugged.

They’d corner him on 11th Street, just after he’d caught the keys Keith had thrown down and chased him all the way here. The two men who’d wrestled him down beneath the Hare Krishna Tree in Tompkins Square Park, hitting him in the side of the head with their arms, these great, walloping, pile-driver blows, were long gone, leaving him to contemplate his place beneath the canopy of modern religion’s birthplace.

Apparently, Allen Ginsberg had danced in this very spot where he was now bleeding out onto cold concrete. He who saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night…he could go on.

He forced himself up into a sitting position, cradling his knees, mindful of the blood leaking out of his lips. It was cold. They’d taken his jacket.

“Bastards,” Shiro wheezed. It wasn’t like he’d had any money. At least they hadn’t stolen his keys. He choked on the night air, retching over the pain of his bruised ribs. “What a welcome.”

Someone on Avenue B was chanting: “Christmas bells are ringing! Christmas bells are ringing! Christmas bells are ringing! Somewhere else – not here.”

The truth was that Christmas had evolved from the Roman holiday Saturnalia, a winter festival where men exchanged gifts, got drunk, and had sex with each other. He had to giggle at the notion and he probably looked insane.

 _Expelled from the academies for crazy and publishing odes on the windows of the skull,_ wrote Ginsberg and, _drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls._

“You okay, honey?”

The question belonged to a guy with glasses, the kind of guy who strolled around parks at night because he had nothing better to do or was looking for something. Shiro, taken aback by his question, regarded the thin silhouette before him and decided not to run. If this guy wanted a piece of him, he could defend himself, battered and bruised though he was.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Did they get any money?”

“No,” he said a little too quickly. His worthlessness was his only defence. “Had none to get – but they purloined my coat.”

“Fucking hell, it’s Christmas Eve.” He sounded peeved. He knelt, allowing the light of the streetlamp to wash over his face. He was young, about the same age as Shiro, with sharpened cheek bones which either meant he was a junkie or poor or both. Sandy brown hair, tanned skin, glasses over grey eyes. “I’m Adam.”

“My friends call me Shiro.”

He made no move to help him up, just stay there, squatting in front of him, flicking between staring at him and the park trees. “It’s rare today to find such a collection of American elms, since many of them have been killed by Dutch Elm Disease. It’s incurable, a fungus carried by bark beetles which colonise on the trees’ branches.”

It was a bit much to have someone discuss arboriculture when he was in so much pain. Shiro wondered if he was hallucinating, that this strange, pretty man was just a dream. “What?”

“I’ll help you out,” Adam said. “But I have a Life Support meeting at nine-thirty.”

“Life Support?”

“It’s for people with AIDS. People like me.”

He swore his heart skittered. Adam was offering his hand and Shiro didn’t even hesitate to accept, wincing as they pulled each other up to standing. “Me too.”

They didn’t need to talk much further on it from there, leaving their eyes to converse, their conjoined hands, magnets – shifting polarities – drawn and repelled to parts of each other’s bodies.

Adam smiled. “Well, we’ll get along fine. Let’s get you a coat, have a bite, make a night of it.”

He suddenly remembered Keith. “My friends are waiting –”

“You’re cute when you blush. The more the merrier – ho ho ho.”

But they weren’t heading back to 11th Street. The only way was forward.

All it took was one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, to wander into his stupid life…and Shiro gave him a piece of him. Adam hadn’t asked for it, but he’d done something dumb that night by smiling and offering his hand, and his life wasn’t all his own anymore.

_Zoom in as they burn the past to the ground and feel the heat of the future’s glow_

The illegal woodstove fire was dwindling. So temporary. So cold.

Katie sat in front of it, on the floor, wrapped in a duvet she’d stolen from Matt’s room. Keith was beside her, holding his guitar like a baby with frostbite. They were sharing the remnants of a bottle of whiskey. Hunk had left a while ago, to help someone called Allura, and said something about checking up on his new roommate when they had the chance but screw that, it was too cold to move.

Colder by the hour, more dead with every breath. How could Matt stand this? He wasn’t here to ask so she’d have to settle for Keith.

“How can you stand it?”

“Stand what?”

“The winters here.”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I also don’t know how to be gay in New Mexico.”

Perhaps Katie understood that much, though she said nothing. It was always so hot, and everyone was always so polite, and everything was all surface, but underneath it was a bomb waiting to go off. Beneath the smiles and southern hospitality and politeness were guns and liquor and secrets. This place had no secrets and maybe that was why her brother had liked it so much. He didn’t have to hide himself or his ‘condition.’

When had she herself started wearing faded old jeans and baggy shirts instead of the dresses her mom bought? When had she stopped wearing makeup and ribbons? When had she started making conscious decisions to look less of what she felt a male would want to see? She wanted to disappear. New York was good for that.

“How come you didn’t go with that guy?” she asked. “Hunk?”

Keith shook his head. “I don’t understand sound tech. Don’t know why he thought I did.”

“What’s the protest about?”

“Increased rent,” he muttered. “I can’t believe Lotor’s charging me for this past year. He said I’d be clear after what happened with Matt.”

Katie tried not to wince. “I didn’t realise it was so bad.”

“That what was so bad?”

“He hardly ever called,” she continued. “And when he did, he made it sound like everything was fine. I didn’t even know he was sick until we got the death certificate. If he couldn’t afford to live here, why didn’t he just come home?”

Keith didn’t reply. Instead, he just got up and ripped a poster off the wall. “Fire’s low.”

She took a swig from the bottle and it burned her throat. She wasn’t old enough to drink. “What?”

“It needs fuel.”

He tossed them into the fire, all of them; posters, scrap paper, sketches, booklets, all the shit he’d been scribbling on throughout the day. Katie was taken aback by his reckless abandon, his knack for destruction, his willingness to burn all his work like it meant nothing. She knew it didn’t mean nothing to him. Even though she’d only known him for twenty-four hours, it was plain to see he treasured his craft.

Nonetheless, he became a hurricane and she watched him twirl around the room as though he were composing a routine, mindless of the candles he’d littered around the room.

“Who the fuck even invented fire?” he asked.

“It wasn’t invented,” Katie replied. “It was discovered.”

“Or gifted.”

“Gifted? By whom?”

Keith shrugged. “Prometheus, crows, hares, angels. Any of the above.”

She thought of the first fire. It would’ve been like magic. Out of dead tinder and grass and sticks came a living warm light. It cracked and snapped and smoked and filled the woods with brightness. It lit up the trees and made them warm and friendly. It stood tall and bright and held back the night. For a few moments, she was in awe at this shitty loft apartment and Keith’s testament to its survivability.

“You need these?”

He was holding up a stack of screenplays that Matt must’ve written and never published. The hours toiling away at a typewriter amounted to an over-glorified booklet. Had she read it? Yes. Had she liked it? No. Did that mean she wanted it burned?

“No but leave them.” Another swig. “Except the one about the dog-woman. That can go.”

She tried not to flinch as the flames gobbled it up, along with sheets laden with handwritten musical notation. Keith was grinning. “The music ignites the night with passionate fire!”

Katie choked on her laughter. “Did you just make a joke?”

“You should try this. It’s fun.”

She giggled, half-drunk on immolation, exchanging the bottle for a stack of crudely drawn character refs. “The narration crackles and pops with incendiary wit!”

There was a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that translated through their action and their movement, the endless tossing of old works to make way for enough to heat to last them until tomorrow. No artist was pleased. There was no satisfaction at any time. There was only queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that kept them dancing and alive through the night.

Katie only stopped when she started to feel sick. Doubled over, laughing from the sight of Keith pouring the last of their liquor into an explosive chasm of flame, she wondered vaguely through the haze: where was Shiro?

_How do you leave the past behind when it keeps finding ways to get to your heart?_

_It reaches way down deep and tears you inside out ti you're torn apart_

_How can you connect in an age where strangers, landlords, lovers, your own blood cells betray?_

_What binds the fabric together when the raging, shifting winds of change keep ripping away_

Where was Hunk?

He was only supposed to be gone a few minutes. Lance was almost too hot to care. His fingers trembled terribly as he sewed, sweating onto the quilt Hunk had woven. It was no surprise that his stitching was so uneven, for to make even stitches the seamstress himself had to be steady. He was no seamstress – he didn’t repair things, he broke them.

The definition of ‘darning’ didn’t quite correspond to the work he accomplished. To darn was to fix by imitating the texture of the stuff, with the thread and needle. When he mended and altered his clothing, Lance wasn’t trying to imitate. His art made no attempt at concealment: in fact, it took a certain pride in revealing itself.

“This is impossible,” he stated quietly, throwing the kente onto the bed beside him. He couldn’t sew on a night like this. There was something in the air getting into his blood and his soul.

Fuck, it was too hot to sit festering in his room.

Lance cracked open the window Hunk had closed and breathed in the cool bliss of outside’s air. The street two storeys below sweated a cold, yellow slime, of hostile people spoiling for a fight and he watched from the fire escape the pockets of homeless huddled around trashcans on fire. Shards of flaming paper fluttered down from above, eviction notices ripped up in denial.

They’d built their own tent city in a lot on the corner of Avenue A and Avenue B, a shanty town of sorts. It reminded him so much of home. The only thing separating him from them was Hunk’s hospitality. The only thing separating him from Cuba was the ocean.

“ _Lo bello no es bello hasta que no se mira con ojos felices_ ,” he said to himself, breathing in the scent-less, sweaty smell of lower Manhattan.

Where Varadero smelled sweet and salty, Manhattan was sour and stifling. It had the smell of gods, demons, empires, and civilisations in resurrection and decay. It was the blue-skin smell of the sea, no matter where he was on the island city, and the blood-metal smell of machines. It smelled of the stir and the sleep and the waste of twenty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smelled of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and the love that produced courage. That smell, above all things, was what welcomed him and told him he had come home.

“That attitude towards the homeless is exactly what we’re protesting!”

A Range Rover had pulled up. Its owner, a tall, long-haired young man, was chastising a bum who’d planted himself on its hood and was likewise being chastised by a passing protestor. Lance knew him well – Allura’s ex, hers and Hunk’s landlord, Lotor, the enemy of the block.

“You’re protesting losing your performance space,” he spat back. “Not my attitude!”

Lance shrunk back, anxious not to be seen. This guy probably wouldn’t take too well to him sleeping on Hunk’s couch. But Lotor wasn’t looking up. His attention was fixed on whoever had just exited the building through the main door. A boy and a girl, neither of whom he knew personally, but the former he recognised all the same. The hot guitar guy from upstairs who’d taken the leaf of his haircare routine from Neil Peart’s book.

They were talking in hushed tones about something he guessed was quite serious – probably the death of Hunk’s neighbour about two months ago. Quite sad, really. Lance had heard about it. Yet another victim of the AIDS epidemic.

The guitarist suddenly pushed Lotor.

“What happened to you?” he yelled, loud enough that Lance didn’t even have to strain to hear. “What happened to the ideals you once pursued?”

Lotor stumbled backwards in a flurry most unbefitting of his character. “The owner of that lot next door has a right to do with it as he pleases!” he sneered.

“Happy birthday, Jesus.”

“The rent,” the landlord pressed.

At that, the girl stepped forward and it was comical how much smaller she was than the other two. “You’re wasting your time. He’s broke and you broke your word!”

Lance couldn’t see if Lotor was smirking, but he could hear it. “There is one way you won’t have to pay. Now that the block has been rezoned, your dreams can become a reality. A state of the art digital, virtual interactive studio. I’ll forego your rent and on paper guarantee that you can stay here for free if you do me one small favour.”

“What?” the girl prompted.

“Cancel the protest.”

He was strolling back towards his Range Rover, clearly confident he’d won the argument. Lance wondered vaguely if Hunk had any eggs he could throw down. His small neighbour was already on it, however.

“Why not just get an injunction or call the cops?”

“I did and they’re on standby,” Lotor remarked. “But my investors would rather I handle this quietly.”

The musician advanced. “You can’t quietly wipe out an entire tent city!”

It was true. Them and their tents which functioned as bedrooms, bathrooms and dinner plates. They fought for food against roaches and rats and, as the year got later, the all-purpose pavements got colder, so the roaches got bigger and the vermin turned to swarms. Lance was, technically, one of them too. Homeless. As of today.

But wasn’t everyone homeless without a home inside their mind? At least he had that.

“You want somewhere to produce films and write songs?” Lotor snapped as he was getting into his car. “You need somewhere to do it! It’s what Matt used to dream about. Think twice before you ruin it.”

Wow. He could see why Allura had dumped him.

He watched his car shoot off down the street until it was out of sight, consumed by the restless mob and the skyscrapers. The two below lingered as well, swaying slightly as though drunk.

“That guy could use some Prozac,” the girl said.

“Or heavy drugs,” the guy added and yes, Lance could totally get on board with that. He fingered the little plastic pouch in his back pocket, the answer to all his problems. “God, I need a cigarette.”

Then, they made eye contact. And damn, it was better than any conversation they could’ve had.

The half-turn of his head, the unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, hands in the pockets of his collar-less leather jacket. He had a hungry, gaunt look beyond that of a normal New Yorker, and it was as terrifying as it was arousing. Lance grinned and waved. How many metres were in a storey? Three metres? So, the top of his head was six metres from his bare feet.

He could see the quirk of his eyebrow, the way his gaiety had become a prisoner within his citadel of flesh and bone, and Lance swapped his wave for a finger over his lips.

_We're not gonna pay_

_Last year's rent_

_This year's rent_

_Next year's rent_

_'Cause everything is rent_

_Don’t let the squatters know:_

_let’s keep it all between us,_

_day, between your bell_

_and my secret._

\- Pablo Neruda


	2. One Song Glory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> weee this story is still going! i'm just very slow at updating...  
> this chapter is pretty dark - please heed the warnings!  
> the klance meet-cute is next chapter, so stayed tuned

**warning:** underage drinking, drug use, needles, toxic relationship, violence (bar fight), unprotected sex, dubcon (sex under the influence), addiction, withdrawal, overdose, character death

_One song  
_ _Glory_

There was no difference in the temperature on the street and the temperature in the apartment. Keith was freezing either way. Nothing burned like the cold – it burned so that it became hard for the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.

He sat in front of the fire in the front room, gloved fingers tucked into his armpits.

“What’s with that guy?” Katie muttered. She was pacing the room haphazardly, clearly annoyed. It wasn’t like Lotor was _her_ landlord – but still, most meetings with that yuppie scum elicited the same reaction.

“Honestly,” she continued, “Who the fuck does he think he is? He can’t just foreclose on you like that!”

“It’s not foreclosure,” Keith said. “It’s eviction.”

He’d given up his anger a while ago. People shouldn’t waste time on such things.

_And why shouldn’t you?_

The part of him that wanted to believe there was a point to it all still raged in his chest. He frowned and patted it down. _Isn’t it funny? How the cold numbs everything but grief. If we could light up a room with pain, we’d be in such a glorious fire._

He reached for his guitar and plucked out a few notes – G, F sharp, B descending. He heard the rip of paper and saw Katie rip apart the notice Lotor had left on the door. A kick to the wall, a cuss-word, then silence.

It was like John Cage’s _4’33”_ , which was both the worst and best piece of music Keith had never heard. He’d never heard it because it was a big fat track of nothing. Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of three tacet movements. It was terrible because it wasn’t really music. It was wonderful because of what it really was.

“I’m going out,” Katie said suddenly. “To look for Shiro. I don’t suppose you’d like to join me? Was thinking we could go for dinner afterwards.”

Keith waved her off. He didn’t really want to face the stairs again. Wished he could say the same for the wind, but it was ever-present, the draft from the shitty single-glazed windows inescapable. Or maybe that was just him.

Ever since James had died, he’d never had a mood that was someplace warm.

“Zoom in on my empty wallet,” he said.

“Touché.” Her footsteps stopped at the door. “Remember to take your AZT.”

The string he strung twanged grouchily. “What are you, my mother?”

How could he ever forget?

_One song  
_ _Before I go  
_ _Glory  
_ _One song to leave behind_

When he’d first arrived in New York, young, dumb, and still as broke as he was now, Fender in his hand like the twiddling gun of a cowboy in a Western – at least Keith then still had his innocence. A wanderer in Manhattan had to go forth with a certain innocence because the city was best seen with innocent eyes.

The place had smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when people stayed out because they couldn’t get to sleep, and it was so calm and brutally indifferent. Fuck, it was beautiful. He’d given up the greatest sunset in the world for New York’s skyline. He liked it particularly because he couldn’t see the details. Just the shapes and the thought that made them.

The sky of New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion did he need?

He’d walked down the bank of the Hudson and kneeled. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight, and he’d just thought of the millions from all over the globe who sought to be on that very island in those same narrow streets. There he was in the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of those who insisted on being where things were happening – and he was one of the victors!

It was possible then in this wonderful place for that nameless musician – for anyone, really – to have a decent chance to scale the walls and achieve what they wished. Wealth, status, or an imposing name counted for nothing in the end. The only credential the city asked was the boldness to dream. For those who did it, it unlocked its gates and treasures, not caring who they were or where they came from.

Living in the spare bed of some guys 400-square foot apartment, commuting to work at a dive bar each night was fine except on those kinds of winter evenings at six-thirty when it was already dark and bitter with a wind off the river, when Keith would be walking very fast towards a bus with a cigarette in his mouth, and he’d look in the bright windows of brownstones and see cooks working in clean kitchens and imagine women lighting candles on the floor above, not for heat but for fun, and children being bathed on the floor above that – except on nights like that, he’d never felt poor.

He’d always had the feeling that if needed money, he could always get it.

_Find  
_ _One song  
_ _One last refrain  
_ _From the pretty boy front man  
_ _Who wasted opportunity_

He met James on a Sunday afternoon at the matinée. Industry night, so he had the day off work. His colleagues liked the hip hop and new wave found in Mudd and Dancetaria, but Keith liked to stay local. The only place he’d been outside of the Village was the Paradise Garage, or Gay-rage as some people liked to call it.

Staying local meant hitting up the Ukrainian-owned, Ukrainian-run Blue & Gold Tavern for a pickleback shot and the Niagara to down their signature Hunter S. Thompson on East 7th Street. Bourbon, walnut, and orange bitters went surprisingly well together.

There was Proletariat and McSorley’s Old Ale House, which was over a hundred years old and survived the era of prohibition. Palladium on East 14th, Studio 54, Limelight and the Tunnel. Lucy’s, named after its Polish owner, with the charmingly cluttered red-lit shelves of Miller High Life, and Lois, which supplied wine and beer from ABC companies.

Even the White Horse, where that Welsh poet drank twenty-one straight whiskies and then died on the spot from alcohol poisoning. (Keith had always wanted to hear the bartender’s side of the story. What was it like watching this guy drink himself out of here? How did it feel handing him number twenty-one and watching his face crumple up before the fall of stool? And did he already have number twenty-two poured, waiting for this big fat tip, and then have to drink it himself after whoever came took the body away?)

It didn’t matter where Keith started off. He always ended up at CBGB.

A bar on the Bowery, whose name stood for Country, Bluegrass and Blues: nowadays it was known for hardcore punk.

James Griffin was an emerging name in that scene. He and his band, the Well Hungarians, were striking out. Wanted to be among the names of Reagan Youth, Bad Brains, Beastie Boys, Cro-Mags, the Youth of Today.

Keith clocked him immediately. Cow-licked hair, tanned skin, shit-eating grin. He was pretty. From the Bronx.

Keith didn’t stand a chance.

_One song  
_ _He had the world at his feet  
_ _Glory  
_ _In the eyes of a young man  
_ _A young man_

“You look like you could use a screaming orgasm.”

Keith had thought he meant the cocktail. By the end of the night, he’d had both.

They'd kissed like they were starving and it was a distraction for the hunger in their bones. James’s kisses were so hungry – every kiss said he could never have enough, but he wasn’t going to stop trying. And when they'd fucked it was raw, in more ways that one. It was like a long winding road that both of them took to get back to each other after a catastrophic argument, where they mapped the contours of each other’s bodies clumsily with fingers no-one would've thought belonged to musicians.

The only way they could really connect was through music. It expressed what neither of them could put into words and what couldn’t remain silent. James had lost his singing voice to cigarettes, but still strung together a melody with enough vivacity to kill a straight man. Keith had a voice that could rival Bryan Adams’s.

When Keith’s roommate kicked him out, it hadn’t been for the racket they made as much as it had been for the fact that he’d walked in on them having sex to a pirated remix of _Bohemian Rhapsody_.

His moving in with James solidified his place as the Well Hungarian’s new lead singer.

_Find  
_ _Glory  
_ _Beyond the cheap-coloured lights_

All Keith could see was the blurred neon sign of The Saint when they stepped outside of the bar. They’d taken a line of speed at home and guzzled half a bottle of Russkaya the night before and he’d woke that morning with terrible mouth ulcers. Rizavi said it served them right, but it wasn’t like she was tee-total.

They’d crawled across town, from some local gay bars to a place called the Cat Scratch Club that had a decent line-up of pretty-boy go-go dancers, to here.

The Saint was a members-only male club on 6th Street, so tonight it was just him, James, and Kinkade. The other band members liked to go by their surnames, but Keith knew James well enough by now to call him whatever he liked.

“Babe,” he said, dizzy and breathless. It was his first time and he felt like he could run, dance, sing forever, but “baby” was all he could say.

“It’s alright,” James crooned and led them past the bouncer.

Inside was a circular dancefloor topped by a planetarium dome, on which lights moved like an aquarium. There were bodies everywhere, tropical fish dressed in white, grinding, moving, their colours changing in accordance with the beat. Wham! was playing on the speakers. It was fucking freezing.

“Come on,” James said, taking Keith’s arm and jostling him towards the toilets. He thought they were just going for a quickie, but then he pulled out some pills, placed one on his own tongue and shoved it into Keith’s mouth. Whatever it was, it would take an hour to drop.

They went to the bar, downed cider and wine chasers, dabbed frantically at salty speed in silver foil. There was no need for secrecy here. James had ripped off his torn t-shirt and Kinkade was lining up cocaine on a formica-top table.

Keith blinked once and he was suddenly on the dancefloor.

For at least a second he was medically dead. Sensing a critical void in the power structure, his limbs bravely attempted to form an interim government and he managed to dance for most of Miquel Brown in what was essentially a fugue state before basic concepts like shape and colour even began to reassert themselves in his consciousness. By the time he could process images again, James was grinning happily at him, shirtless, sweaty, pressed up against the chest of some tall twink, hands gripping his hips, ass, crotch as though it was his for the taking.

Keith frowned and took himself to the bar. He let a middle-aged man with a bald spot buy him shots and rub his fingers through his hair, long and knotted with sweat.

“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” he asked.

“I’m in a band,” Keith said, throwing back something foul.

The guy didn’t seem to care, encircling his lower back with one hand and beckoning for bourbon with the other. His grip tightened around his waist and if Keith had been more lucid it might’ve tickled.

“Hey, babe,” James’ voice ghosted in his ear and right, that’s why this fella was getting handsy.

“Who’s this?” he said, scowling.

“His _boyfriend_ ,” James answered, sliding his own hand into Keith’s back pocket. “Baby,” he murmured into his neck. “It was nothing like that. I was only having a bit of fun. Don’t be like this.”

“Fuck off,” Keith mumbled around his rim of whiskey. God, why was it so hot all of a sudden?

The atmosphere was changing. James said something to the guy still holding his waist, something he didn’t catch, but he could feel the resentment. They had a heated, slurred argument, and then they were exchanging punches. He didn’t recall who struck the first blow.

They couldn’t really hurt each other or feel the force on their fists or bodies. Too wasted.

Keith jumped in when he saw the blood flowing from James’ nose onto his bare chest and over the bar. Got the other man’s hair in a grip and tried to smash his head against the wall, but his hands were so numb and heavy. Someone pulled him off and threw him away from the bar, and he got up, singing, following the music into the packed hall of sweating bodies, pushing and shoving his way to the middle.

One guy headbutted him but he ignored it, not even stopping to acknowledge that now his nose was bleeding too. He started jumping, a few feet away from the main stage, where the DJ was jockeying. He was playing _Neon Forest_. Somebody slapped him on the back, and he turned, rearing to go.

It was James, grinning maniacally.

“Babe, you are mental,” he said, blood coating his chin, hands, teeth.

They collided so violently it might’ve looked like they were fighting. But in between James fisting his blood-stained shirt and Keith’s hands in his hair, their mouths bruised each other, all tenderness and savagery. It was wet and metallic and disgusting. They kissed like they were each other’s oxygen and they were dying to breathe, to the sound of Iggy Pop singing, “America takes drugs in psychic defence.

You can say what you want but nobody’s there.

Have you got any money?

Are you anybody?”

_One song_   
_Before the sun sets_   
_Glory_   
_On another empty life_

Keith only tried it because everyone else did. They were at Rizavi’s apartment in Washington Heights. She used to live in Brooklyn with her parents. She also used to be Muslim.

Kinkade was tightening his belt around her upper arm. He heated brown water on a spoon with a lighter until it turned to syrup, siphoned it into a syringe, and injected. Rizavi breathed in once, then out with a moan. Practically melted into his arms. He lay her down gently.

James was busy with his own arm. He’d already done Leifsdottir.

Keith stubbed out his cigarette on the arm of his chair. “What does that stuff do for you, babe?”

James shrugged, too focused on the dope. They’d been together four months.

“Tell me,” Keith insisted. “I want to know.”

Kinkade was the only one to talk.

“It kinda makes things feel more real. Life’s boring and futile. We start off with high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re all going to die without really finding out the big answers. We develop all long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality in our lives in different ways, without really extending our body in worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things.”

James snorted. “It’s just a good fucking kick.”

“Why say what you can do?” Leifsdottir said from where she was splayed out on the floor.

It was a valid point, but James stiffened. “Fuck off, Ina.”

“You say it’s a good kick,” Keith said. “I want to try it.”

“You don’t,” James said. “Come on, babe. Take my word for it.”

He didn’t want to. Kinkade kept going, even after he’d pricked himself. “We live a short, disappointing life. And then we die. We fill up our lives with shit, things like careers and relationships to delude ourselves that it isn’t all totally pointless. Smack’s an honest drug because it strips away these delusions. With smack, when you feel good, you feel immortal. When you feel bad, it intensifies the shit that’s already there. It’s the only honest drug. It doesn’t alter your consciousness. It just gives you a hit and a sense of well-being. After that, you see the misery in the world as it is, and you can’t anaesthetise yourself against it.”

Keith had never heard someone do coherent on heroin.

“Fuck’s sake, Ryan,” James snapped.

The problem wasn’t that Keith didn’t feel he was achieving his dreams because he definitely was. The Well Hungarians were on the rise, had a semi-competent manager nowadays and a regular gig at 8BC. But he still hadn’t figured out his magnum opus, the song that would launch them into fame and eternalise his legacy.

He could do with feeling immortal.

“Cook us up a shot,” he said to James, who only shook his head. “I can handle it, babe. One fucking shot isn’t going to hurt me. Come on.”

James sighed and then shrugged. Beckoned Keith to sit with him cross-legged on the floor. Undid the belt around his arm and tied it around Keith’s so hard that it hurt, then flicked his own needle at eye level. The syrup inside the syringe rippled. 

Keith couldn't tell if his hesitance to let him take a hit was from genuine concern or greed.

“After this,” James said. “You’ve done it. You’ve got the set. Dope, acid, speed, molly, shrooms, barbies, vallies, smack, the fucking lot. Knock it on the head. Make this the first and last time.”

It wouldn’t be.

_Time flies  
_ _Time dies_

Everything dilated. Gravitational potential dropped.

The heroin was a neutron star whose density was so great that Keith could neither tear himself away nor could he hope to regain a temporally balanced trajectory. He felt sick and ecstatic all at once.

“That beats any meat injection,” he gasped. “That beats any cock in the world.”

It wasn’t like any other uppers he’d tried. With Adderall, coke, meth, speed, molly he got this bright, shining euphoria on loan. But with them he always owed back what they delivered. After a night of snorting and smoking and pills he’d wake up feeling like shit.

The heroin didn’t make him do stupid shit like smash James’ guitar on stage or stay up all day and hallucinate like amphetamines and coke. It didn’t empty his serotonin like molly or give him a hangover like alcohol. It didn’t fuck him up.

He’d do it on the weekends, after shows to kill the buzz, then before to mellow his nerves. He lost track of time this way. Days passed. Weeks. Months went by.

He woke up at 5.30pm for his shift and commuted in New York traffic in the rain. James was still in bed. He had a headache, felt miserable, wondered how life got him to this point.

But no, no, everything was _fine_. Life was beautiful. The raindrops were just falling and in each one he saw the reflection of another person’s life before him.

Humanity was beautiful. In this still frame shot of traffic on this crowded bus he found love and peace. Heroin was a wonder drug. Heroin was better than anything else. Heroin made life worth living.

Heroin made him who he wished he was.

Heroin built up tolerance fast. Heroin started to cost more money.

The guy that sold them the first few bags for $10 a piece didn’t deal anymore. Kinkade found a felon called Rolo who always carried a gun – he could sell what made them find love in the world.

The bus jittered through a pothole and Keith jolted awake. His face was hot with tears.

He’d thought he loved James. Now, he didn’t love at all.

_Glory  
One blaze of glory_

Ten minutes before they went on and it was time to break down inside. Keith locked the dressing room toilet, did vocal exercises, relaxing his jaw and singing, “Do, re, mi, do, re, mi.” He took another sip of his vodka and sang, “Fuck this shi-ii-ii-it.”

“Babe,” James’ voice said with a gentle knock on the door. “Let me in.”

Keith exhaled and considered his chances. The crowd was chanting louder than ever, and he could hear them. He hid his face in his hands and willed his body not to shake. It was too much. Every night was too fucking much but somehow he ended up in the middle of the stage, Kinkade behind him, Rizavi and James to his left, Leifsdottir to his right, and they remained where they were for an hour and he sang, he sang and he played, and he always walked out in one piece, but even closer to caving than before.

He needed James to talk him into it, something to get him through it.

He let James in, and he closed the door behind himself. “It’s an enthusiastic crowd out there tonight,” he said. “That’s never stopped you before though.”

Keith shook his head. “This is CBGB. It’s different.”

“They’ll love you. They always do.” He pulled out a bag of brown powder from his jean pocket. “Will this help?”

“God, _yes_.”

James wasn’t usually so generous. Keith snorted a line, felt it burn the inside of his nostril, on a one-way ticket right up to his brain.

Then, they were kissing. He opened his mouth for James, pliant against the unfamiliar taste of his boyfriend, unrecognisable in the haze of the high. The stubble on his chin was long, rough against the skin around Keith’s mouth, but he kissed back harder. He could hear the crowd and the crew and the band talking behind the door.

James’ hands were restless, palming where Keith’s clothes were in the way of them touching skin-to-skin. Keith wrapped his legs around him hurriedly, pressing him into his crotch. Each nip at his lips settled hard in his guts, making his skin burn.

His hand moved between them, cupping James’ cock. The outline of his erection was hot in his palm, trapped between his jeans and thigh.

“Babe –”

“Come on,” James said. He had absolutely no patience. Keith wondered if he’d taken something too. He stepped back, pulling Keith with him off the counter he’d seated himself on. “Around,” he told him from the midst of feverish kisses.

Keith turned to face the sink, his belt unbuckled, jeans unzipped and pushed down to his ankles. In the mirror, he saw his skin shining with sweat, his nose red and dripping. He gulped and the nasal drip tasted acrid on the back of his tongue.

James pressed his crotch to his ass, eyes focused on the large bulge of Keith’s boxer briefs. In the mirror, Keith saw his hand sliding to rest on his lower stomach, on the stripe of skin exposed, fingers flexing and cupping him, rubbing his head through the fabric, shaft, balls, taint, ass.

Keith’s stomach dropped, insides dripping with heat.

The mirror helped. He could hardly feel his body anymore, hardly knew what was happening when James pushed inside and fucked him senseless, but seeing himself in the mirror, hair dishevelled, mouth hanging open to get enough air in, one hand flat on the counter, the other around his leaking cock – helped him understand that the pleasure filling him wasn’t just from the high.

James’ chest was glued to his back and Keith pressed into his thrusts, now jerky and un-coordinated. He suddenly grunted, low and filthy in his ear, and came, burying himself as deep as he could go, spreading his legs further apart as he fucked his ass through it.

Keith couldn’t come, not while high. Nothing would feel as good as what was pumping through his sinuses. But James tried anyone, planting his softening cock deep in his asshole and pumping him one-handed while his cum dribbled out. With the other, he held Keith up by his chest as his eyes rolled back and he went limp.

“There you are, baby,” he purred. “You’re so good. You can let go now.”

Keith groaned loud and with the strength he could muster, grabbed James’ wrist, slowing his pace. Feeling was starting to come back now, and he felt raw and sensitive. The high had only lasted for ten minutes, maybe less, but it was enough.

James cleaned him up in the meantime, pulled up his boxers, jeans and re-did his belt. Wiped the sweat from his brow and the back of his neck and the drool beading on his lips, and sent him out into the world with a kiss.

The band must’ve known – the bathroom probably reeked of sex – but they didn’t say anything. The crowd loved sex appeal, especially when it was from a gay man. This was CBGB after all.

“Hey!” Keith screamed into the mic once they’d positioned themselves on stage, stroking the neck of his guitar. “I’m here, I’m queer, and I’m ready for a beer!”

The crowd, some three hundred strong, roared. A runner brought him a pint and he downed it one gulp, smashing the empty glass on the stage before launching into his first song.

_Find  
Glory  
In a song that rings true  
Truth like a blazing fire  
An eternal flame_

The thing was that three hundred wasn’t enough. Keith didn’t want a sell-out show at CBGB. He didn’t want Madison Square Garden. He didn’t even want the Superbowl.

He wanted immortality.

Something like _Imagine_ by John Lennon, or _(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction_. _Johnny B. Good. Blowin’ In The Wind. Stairway to Heaven_. _All Along the Watchtower._ Anything by the Beatles. _Bohemian Rhapsody._ It had to be good – none of this “baby, baby, baby” shit – and something to solidify his legacy as one of the greatest songwriters of all time. A one-hit wonder, maybe.

He’d been obsessed with musical immortality since the death of his father. Burned in a fire, left no trace. Keith wanted to leave things for the future, beyond blurred Polaroids of suburban life in the Bible Belt. Something that would make people remember and long for a past they’d never had, experience sadness and pain and joy and nostalgia – the kinds of things that books could evoke, but shorter, more condensed, more impactful.

Language wasn’t universal, but music was.

“What are you doing, babe?” James asked, rolling over to flick whatever he was smoking into their bedside ashtray. “It’s still early.”

“Writing,” Keith said. He’d been hunched over his guitar since midday, scribbling down chords. None of his songs thus far had got them a record deal. _G, F sharp, B descending_.

James scoffed. Took a deep drag. “Give it a rest, man. Come back to bed.”

The promise of another hit was tempting. He’d been itching for one all morning, but his music mattered more. It had to. It was the only tangible thing left.

He was trembling so hard he missed the next string. Pulled something off-tune and cringed. He put the guitar down.

“Do we have any left?” Keith asked.

James shook his head. “Got to see Rolo.”

Keith was already pulling on a jacket. “Let’s fucking go.”

He was sick, suffering from withdrawal. James never seemed to get it as bad as him. Maybe he was used to it, maybe he had more stash he was keeping quiet. For just a second, Keith really fucking hated him. Only for a second. It never lasted long.

“Alright,” James said, pulling on a pair of jeans from the floor. “Let’s go.”

_Find_   
_One song_   
_A song about love_

In the winter, they fucked to keep warm. Keith had left his job to make more time for the band and they couldn’t afford the electricity bill anymore. They’d built up such a tolerance to the smack that it now cost $100 a pop to feel anything beyond a light buzz.

Damp and dark and freezing to their bones, they fucked in the moonlight, Keith’s cock buried deep in James. He was all carved edges. They’d both lost weight, had a cough and a cold, high temperatures, sweaty, pink-faced, gaunt, starving. Miserable, in withdrawal, their very existence hanging from a thread.

“ _Fuck_ ,” James breathed, sharp hips stuttering, hollow stomach taut and quivering. “I love you.”

It was the first time he said it. The only time he said it.

_Glory  
From the soul of a young man_

James wasn’t getting any better. They went to the doctor.

Keith, passing himself off as a roommate, wasn’t allowed to sit in the consultation room. James told him after how the nurse had taken his bloods, then immediately sterilised the equipment, even worn a face mask once he’d outlined his sexual history.

A week later, a letter came in the post. Not an insurance claim, but a doctor’s note.

On yellow parchment, it stated their death sentence.

James was HIV-positive. Keith didn’t need a blood test to know that he was too. They used the same needles, fucked without protection.

Neither of them cried. Neither of them spoke. All they did was go to the nearest ATM, draw out $200, and go to see Rolo.

_Find_  
 _One song  
_ _Before the virus takes hold_

The common cold was a killer.

It didn’t matter that James was only twenty. When his immune system stopped working, things as simple as the flu became deadly. Bronchitis, sinusitis, even a sore throat. He was never safe. The AZT only made it worse.

He vomited every morning and evening, lost more weight, even when Keith gave him half his portion. He barely slept and developed anaemia. They had to cancel their contract with CBGB after he fainted on stage. Kinkade fucked off to another band, Rizavi went to rehab, Leifsdottir disappeared.

Before he knew it, Keith was alone.

The only reprieve from the constancy of their dingy, puke-scented apartment was the grocery shop, picking up smack, and Life Support.

“Hi,” he said, sitting by himself in a circle of unfamiliar faces, leather jacket now too broad for his shoulders, a cigarette between chapped lips, and knees bunched tight together, bouncing. “My name’s Keith.”

“Hello, Keith,” everyone echoed.

“I’m HIV-positive,” he continued. “Got diagnosed last month. So’s my boyfriend. We’ve been together for a year. He couldn’t make it today because – well, he’s sick. AIDS.”

The woman sat opposite him nodded understandingly. She looked like she’d come straight from an office job. The man next to her might’ve been a junkie. It was hard to tell. Heroin took all types. And beside him, a university professor. Definitely not on smack, but maybe marijuana.

Keith took a shaky breath. “It’s hard,” he said, and boy, that was an understatement. “Sometimes I wonder if he’ll make it through the night. Sometimes I wonder if he’ll make it through the day. What if I go back now and he’s – ?”

He couldn’t finish. Keith decided in that moment that he didn’t like Life Support. He didn’t like all their gaunt, sad faces looking in at him. He didn’t like that he probably looked like that too.

“Hey,” the professor said to him afterwards, catching him on the shoulder on the way out. “My name’s Shiro.”

They shook hands. His was surprisingly warm. Fleshy too, like he knew how to eat. His smile reminded Keith of his dad.

“Keith, right?” Shiro said, and he nodded. “You were in that band. The Well Hungarians. My roommate actually got a few clips of your shows back in the day. Great music. We loved your gigs.”

He was so startled he was almost rendered speechless. He’d all but given up on his music career. “Thank you. I didn’t think anyone would remember us.”

Shiro sniffed. “It wasn’t that long ago.”

It certainly felt like it.

“You should come over to watch them sometime,” Shiro said. “You and your boyfriend if he can manage. He’d jump at the opportunity to get an interview with you guys. He’s making this documentary.”

He scribbled down his address and phone number on a piece of paper he found in his pocket. 11th Street. Just a few blocks away.

“Matt’s usually in in the evenings. I’m only back for the holidays. I work at MIT. The buzzer’s broken so you’ll have to ring from the telephone booth outside. He’ll throw the keys down.”

“Alright,” Keith replied, pocketing the note. Sounded simple enough.

“Did you want to grab a drink?” Shiro asked. He was definitely gay, but it didn’t come across as a proposition. “Unless you’ve got to get back.”

“No,” Keith blurted out. “I’m free.”

James would probably wonder where he was, but he could always send a text.

He ended up back at Shiro’s after one beer, sat on the couch with him and Matt watching videos of their old gigs and reigniting his desire to really do it, to write one good song before he died. They all took their AZT at the same time and Keith stumbled home in the snow, warmer than he’d felt in a long time.

_Glory  
_ _Like a sunset  
_ _To redeem this empty life_

“Where have you been? Did you get anything?”

James hadn’t moved from the bed. Keith was swaying in the doorway, still slightly tipsy. By ‘anything’ he knew James meant drugs.

“No,” he answered.

“Fuck’s sake,” James muttered. “I have to do everything myself.”

He started to get up, but Keith put his hands on his shoulders. He was stronger and had the leverage of height, was able to keep him down.

“No, don’t,” he said. “I’ll get it. Just wait.”

He knew the withdrawal coupled with James’ illness would probably kill him, but it still felt like betrayal to venture back into the night, to pick up the one thing he knew was destroying him more than his own white blood cells.

He passed trashcan fires, homeless people shivering in their sleeping bags. The apartment still didn’t have any heating. Prostitutes in short, tight dresses, soliciting him with bodies he didn’t care for. Depravation was relative. There were children starving to death, dying every second like flies. The fact that this was happening in another place didn’t negate the fundamental truth. In the time it took to crush up a few pills, cook them and inject them, thousands of children in other countries and maybe a few in this one would be dead. In the time it took to do this, thousands of rich bastards would be thousands of pounds richer as investments ripened.

Keith speed dialled Rolo. Met him by the river. Handed him $100 for his trouble and left, just as quickly as he came.

Crushing up pills. People should really leave them to the stomach. Brains and veins were too fragile to carry that stuff.

James was remarkedly less cranky when he got back in. He even greeted him with a kiss. Had prepared himself, nice and proper, wrapped up his arm and tapped the vein out. James’ didn’t live as close to the surface as most people’s, but since he’d lost muscle mass and fat it was always a lot easier. The bruises puncturing his pallid skin were practically indistinguishable from each other.

Keith cooked while James waited. He always preferred to inject himself.

“Are you not joining, babe?”

“Not tonight.”

He was happy enough.

Once he was done, James lay back against the duvet, pupils growing wide and bones melting beneath his skin. He mumbled, "good night," as usual but his words were so slurred it came out as "goodbye" as Keith tucked him in. 

_Time flies  
_ _And then no need to endure anymore_

_Time dies_

The next morning James’ body was cold in the bed beside him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neon Forest actually came out in 1990, which is probably a year or so after this is set - pls excuse the discrepancy  
> i took a leaf out of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting to describe what heroin feels like considering i haven't actually done it myself


End file.
